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raque writes "The NYTimes is reporting on just
how badly Apple Retail employees are being paid. Apple is exploiting its fan base for cheap labor. This is one reason I don't go to Apple Stores if I can avoid it. Stores like NY's Tekserve offer a great shopping experience without so exploiting their workers." Would you rather start at an Apple store for $11.91 an hour (average starting base pay, according to the linked article) and an employee discount, or at Tiffany for $15.60?

My wife works at an Apple store and pulls in $29.15 an hour working the genius bar. Which means that she would have been able to qualify for the mortgage we took out three months ago just on her salary. The 25% employee discount is nice also.

Methinks the poster has an axe to grind with his inflamatory language.

Even for the non-genius bar employees, is $11.91/hour starting pay for retail supposed to be shocking or what? I worked many jobs just out of high school in the 90's for $5/hour, it's been a long time since I was paid hourly but am I really that disconnected that I think 12 bucks an hour seems fair?

Your comment is based on your lack of understanding about how badly the dollar has devalued. $12/hour isn't a living wage in a lot of places.

It may not be a living wage, but it's almost twice what my wife makes at Target doing a fairly similar job. Everyone else's wages have been stagnant despite increasing cost of living (I make only about 15% more now than I did right out of college 7 years ago), so I don't see why retail would be an exception. Of course, if we didn't legitimize bribery in our government, maybe we'd have a minimum wage that you could actually live on, but that's a completely different topic.

If you pay everyone at ANY job a living wage, how are teenagers supposed to find work? They do not NEED a living wage. They would rather you hire two of them instead of one on a living wage, so they both can work.

It's no surprise teenage unemployment is skyrocketing, with a whole generation of kids unable to gain the valuable experience of working - and it's all thanks to people like you who REALLY do not understand the full job market and all the roles it plays throughout someones lifetime.

Teenage unemployment is skyrocketing and yet we have some of the lowest minimum wages(adjusted for inflation) the country has seen in its modern history. It's almost like wages have nothing to do with teenage unemployment at this point.

"Minimum wage" is a modern invention. It's a stupid idea that doesn't work.

LOL. It only prevents us from having riots in the streets like in the good ol' days of robber baron capitalism. You know, even rich people understand that if there are too many destitute poor people around them, sooner or later there's going to be a fight, and the poor are numerically superior...

Where exactly is this "most places" you speak of? I live in Phoenix, which is within a few percent of the national average cost of living index, and $10 an hour (while not exactly providing for a luxurious lifestyle) was plenty to live off of only a year ago (I've increased my income substantially since then, in case you're wondering.)

And why should Apple pay retail clerks walking the floor a wage designed to support a family of four? Do the clerks add THAT MUCH value to the proposition that they deserve $20-25/hr + benefits?

Should Apple ignore the near inexhaustible supply of willing and able workers that will take the job for $12/hour?

If Apple were to double retail clerk pay ($12 -> $25/hr) do you think Apple would keep the same number of clerks, halve the number of clerks or create more clerk positions? My money is on halving the number of clerks in the store.

has gone up dramatically since the 1990s, and the Consumer Price Index has essentially been 'gamed' to hide all of this.

gasoline in particular went haywire about the same time that the commodities exchanges switched from open pits to electronic trading (see the book Asylum by McGrath-Goodman for more information)

food is linked to gasoline of course, but it still doesn't explain why flour is fluctuating up and down by 100% every few months.

housing of course went through the roof thanks to the subprime mortgage securities and their deriviatives (CDOs, Synthetic CDOs, etc), and the foreclosure robo-signing scandal has backlogged the system so much that prices still havent come down properly.

Actually no most people haven't. Housing cost have gone down, but it's almost impossible for someone to get a mortgage to afford one. I don't care how nice or big a house is, most people can not simply put +80k down on a new place. So they are left rent, and rent has not gone down. If anything it's gone way up. Hell I'm in AZ (one of the worse hit areas of the state to boot), I've seen homes and apartments going for 30-50% more then they where 2 years ago! The town home right next to mine was going for 1200

which saw several million casualties and refugess, including over a million people dead, with chemical warfare and massive tank battles, and then the 1991 gulf war where Saddam set his own oil fields on fire.... then of course the 1970s violent revolution in Iran, the rise of the Ba'ath Party in Syria and Iraq, the Suez crisis, the various wars against israel, etc.

compared to all that, the US invasion in 2003 of Iraq is not very big. it seems big, but it really does not explain the price craziness at all. things have been much more chaotic in the past in the middle east, but prices were much more stable.

What is the point of working if you are not earning a living wage, seriously, why? Who would you be fooling working eight hours a day five days a week basically pointlessly, can't afford health insurance, can't afford a reasonable place to live, can barely afford to sustain yourself only sufficiently to be able to turn up for work. Why work within that system when logically your only hope of a future is to rebel against it, especially when you see all those cheats, liars and thieves wallowing around at the top of it.

In public policy, a living wage is the minimum hourly income necessary for a worker to meet basic needs (for an extended period of time or for a lifetime). These needs include shelter (housing) and other incidentals such as clothing and nutrition. In some nations such as the United Kingdom and Switzerland, this standard generally means that a person working forty hours a week, with no additional income, should be able to afford a specified quality or quantity of housing, food, utilities, transport, health care, and recreation. In addition to this definition, living wage activists further define "living wage" as the wage equivalent to the poverty line for a family of four.

The living wage differs from the minimum wage in that the latter is set by law and can fail to meet the requirements of a living wage - or is so low that borrowing or application for top-up benefits is necessary. It differs somewhat from basic needs in that the basic needs model usually measures a minimum level of consumption, without regard for the source of the income.

The ILO uses various criteria to recommend minimum wage levels: the needs of workers and their families, the general level of wages in a county, the cost of living, social security benefits, the relative living standards of social groups and economic factors such as economic development and employment maintenance. The living wage focuses more on the needs of worker units, social security benefits and cost of living.

Living wage and minimum wage are two different things. Living wage is defined by the wage that needs to be met that can meet the basic needs to maintain a safe decent standard of living the their community and have the ability to save for future needs and goals.[1] To meet living wage people need to make about $12.50 an hour. Currently the minimum wage across the US is $7.25, which is well below living wage. In 1990 the first living wage campaigns were launched by community initiatives in US addressing increasing poverty faced by workers and their families. They argued that employee, employer, and the community win with a living wage. Employees would be more will work helping the employer reduce worker turnover ratio and it would help the community when the citizens have enough to have a decent life.[2]

Poverty threshold is the income necessary for a household to be able to consume a low cost, nutritious diet and purchase non-food necessities in a given country. Poverty lines and living wages are measured differently. Poverty lines are measured by household units and living wage is based on individual workers.

A related concept is that of a family wage – one sufficient to not only support oneself, but also to raise a family.

actually it's a fairly good description of the process you would use to determine the lowest possible wage someone can be self sustaining on. That's a useful metric for governments when setting minimum wages, and for employers looking to hire people who are just barely at that level.

That doesn't necessarily apply to Apple stores though, nor is starting salary reflective of average salary, or salary after a year or the like.

If (for sake of argument) the living wage was 20 dollars an hour, and you were paying 10, then you were clearly telling future employees that this isn't a job where you're expected to be independent at early on. You're looking to hire students mostly, or people otherwise fresh out of school looking for whatever until they get something better.

Now as someone above said, the genius bar gig paying 29 an hour is a big step up from a living wage. But your average teller monkey can't do genius bar level work, that might be a training gap, that might be experience, and it might be that training gets you into the genius bar, and then experience will promote you up to that point.

But calculations like living wage are really important. They tell both the government and employers what lifestyle their employees will be in. 24k a year before taxes doesn't get you a whole lot, but what it does get you depends a lot on where you live. Where I am 24K/year would get you your own apartment, public transit to work, and food. You'd really struggle to have enough money to go to school additionally or that sort of thing (car for example), but you at least wouldn't starve to death and could afford internet access to troll/.. You'd just have to have a way out already, because 12 bucks an hour might trap you at equivalent to that rate for life.

actually it's a fairly good description of the process you would use to determine the lowest possible wage someone can be self sustaining on.

There are the usual three things to note here. First, not everyone needs to be self-sustaining. In particular, the teenager living in Mom's basement doesn't need to be. They also need job experience. Living wages leave them unemployed unless they happen to be worth those wages.

Living wages leave them unemployed unless they happen to be worth those wages.

Precisely. What the living wage people either forget or ignore is that the alternative to a "living wage" job is not a lower paid one, but no job at all. So the real effect of a "living wage" law is to ensure that anyone whose labor cannot justify a wage that's at least as high as the "living wage" shall remain unemployed. To hire someone who's labor cannot justify the "living wage" is to engage in charity and many small business owners cannot afford to be that generous.

Perhaps we ought to fashion a global system of government designed to guarantee useful employ and a humanely-appointed and self-sustaining lifestyle to each and every human being alive, rather than extend the massive self-enrichment scheme of some 200 people (and thousands more aspirants) which we today recognize as the contemporary world's geopolitical organization?

Why can't we change the way people think? The way the wealthy and the politically powerful think? Why can't we educate them that to do so is in their best interests as well as the best interests of their fellow humans?

Even slaves got (crappy) room and board out of the deal. People making less than a living wage don't even get that. They are probably better off out of work.

If we allow employers to hire people at less than a living wage, we just end up subsidizing their payroll with food stamps. Shall we also help them buy labor saving devices at a discount and pay their power bills for them?

Maybe it will fail. That's what's great about the free market, it prevents businesses which are inefficient or not economically viable from continuing to operate. Compare this to government which wastes tax dollars year after year on stupid, wasteful and inefficient programs. It's much more difficult to get rid of bad governments and that's a big part of the problem with government trying to do too much and be all things to all people; it doesn't work. Market forces are like natural forces, we ignore them at our collective peril.

Yes, but having a living wage doesn't exacerbate significantly the problem for young black men, but it does solve many other problems. Australia has a $15+ min. wage, near zero governmental debt, and an economy that runs.

And there isn't a market in the world that is 'free'. At best we have a competitive monopolistic market. I swear, everyone took Intro to Micro and never paid attention to the entire section on why markets fail.

Young black men are unemployed largely because the only jobs they can get don't pay enough to make it worth working.

That's an interesting opinion which I doubt has any basis in reality. As a counterexample, apparently, there's a lot of people hired into the drug trade at below federal minimum wage. There might be other perks such as sex or drugs, but it remains that a lot of people are working illegally (in more than one sense of the word) for much less than any "living wage" would be. So they're already working at the so-called "don't pay enough to make it worth working" level.

Australia also didn't spend ten billion dollars bailing out Wall Street and a defective auto industry and have to finance three wars on foreign soil. Our problems go a lot deeper than just minimum wage.

Wage slavery is when the slave makes less than what is required to live independently and save enough money to better himself/herself.
It has nothing to do with $1000/month or whatever. If you dont make enough money to move out of your parents' house, then you're a wage slave.
If you don't make enough money that you can't save enough to survive six months when you lose your job, then you're a wage slave. If you don't make enough to be able to take care of your family, then you're a wage slave.

It's called wage slavery because the person is stuck, all their time is spent at a job and it's impossible to leave that job because it never pays enough to save the minimum amount needed to move away without risk.

If you live in NY city, and you make $1000/month, you're obviously a wage slave. The same amount in Nowheresville may not be as bad.

There are the usual three things to note here. First, not everyone needs to be self-sustaining. In particular, the teenager living in Mom's basement doesn't need to be. They also need job experience. Living wages leave them unemployed unless they happen to be worth those wages.

On the other hand if you do need to be self-sustaining but some teenager living in his mum's basement is willing to undercut the wages you need just to survive you will be unemployed.

In a lot of respects, I agree with that assessment. Yet I'd add a caveat: the value of an employee depends upon how much they contribute to the company's bottom line. This favours Apple employees: fast food involves a lot of labour for a low cost product.

1) People walk into Apple stores to buy Apple products. iPhones literally sell themselves. It's not the guy with the credit card scanner.

So in this regard, the sales staff, while important--aren't terribly unique or important to the transaction except not being bad. And there are plenty of not-bad employees to choose from. So I see no reason to have high wages.

2) The flip side is that as they say an Apple sales person can easily sell $350,000 worth of *PROFIT* per year. Probably gross sales for an Apple retail employee are a fraction of say a Target checker but that's incredibly efficient--so it seems from a one-off perspective a company which makes $350k from someone's labor every year should give him a good cut of that. Instead they just put the profit into the bank.

As to the article in specific. Comparing an Apple Employee to a Tiffany's employee is a bad comparison. Like I said, an iPhone sells itself. A tiffany's employee needs to present a high-end image to the client. A Tiffany sales person needs to compose themselves like as if they too could afford their goods. That means their expenses for wardrobe are higher, they will have a higher demand on their physical appearance and they need to present an image.

A 20 something sales person at Apple though just needs to be a 20 something person who uses a smart phone... which is pretty much every 20 something in existence.

An iPhone may sell itself but Apple profits heavily from upgrades and accessories. Any salesperson who can up-sell from the base model and get the customer to sign up to Apple Care is generating extra revenue.

Unfortunately for employees the only reward for this behaviour is keeping their job.

I say fortunately. I do not like aggressive sales staff. Let me play around with said gadgets, and answerf my questions when I ask, otherwise leave me alone to it. Apple stores are really good at that. I do not want used car salesmen in an Apple store.

Me either. However, I do find myself generating some outrage at the overall picture.

If you're working full time, you should be paid enough to live. I don't care if you're job is cleaning up dog shit in the park. If you can't afford to live off a full-time job, then you are not employed, you are enslaved.

Not in New York City they're not, and that is what the New York Times is talking about. Yes, Much of the country starts people at ~$9 / hr, but in NYC, $9 / hr is starvation wage. $12 / hr will pay for food and possibly rent, but thats about it. Glassdoor uses the nationwide numbers, and the number of retails sales people in rural areas far outweighs the numbers in the major metropolitan areas. That is why the major met areas pay more, because each individual sales person does more volume by virtue of being

Maybe that's because most PC manufacturers use Apple as an R&D department.

Style is not R & D. There's little question that Apple provides inspiration in the area of style, but their R & D is completely separate from every other company's.

Apple has taken the lead in bringing new technologies (usually developed by others) to the mainstream. Intel deployed USB as a part of their chipsets for years before Apple adopted the technology. When Apple started using USB, the industry followed suit. Apple was the first to make CD-ROM standard equipment in a home computer. Apple was t

LOL Wut? The PCs have been pretty much ahead of the curve compared to Apple on everything but shiny. Frankly intel is pushing Ultrabooks not because Apple made the air, but because the average laptop goes for $400 and they know their new core chips can't be sold on machines with THAT low of a margin which is why they are trying to push a market where they can sell i5s and i7s.

Frankly Apple has NEVER been ahead of the curve, they are a brand, like Prada and Nike. You look at even the machines Apple releases on their refresh and you can get machines that very same day that have MOAR power, MOAR memory, MOAR speed, and cost less. the ONLY thing that sells Apple is the brand, because it'll never be hip to carry a Dell or an HP, that's all.

For someone accusing another poster of fanboyinsm, don't you think you're oversimplifying things a little too much? Have you actually used a Mac? Yes, you can get the same specs for less, but can you get the same specs with the same kind of build quality, battery life, driver support (on both OS X and Windows), display quality, and overall integration with an entire ecosystem for less on anything else?

Not saying their machines aren't pretty, or that OSX doesn't look nice, but that is simply not what gets people to line around the block to buy the new iPhone or iPad on release day when there is not a thing wrong with the iPhone or iPad they have. What gets them to camp like tickets to a rock concert is the fact that its simply not cool to carry last year's iPad anymore than it is to wear last year'd designer fashions. Its status, like Gucci or Prada or Armani, which is fine if you are into that but its not because they are ahead of anything, its because its fashion. Oh and before anybody brings up retina don't bother, you've been able to buy ultra HD screens for years its simply not been something people bought. People buy it now not because they suddenly give a crap about ultra HD on such a small screen, its because that ultra HD comes with an Apple logo. hell i'm shocked they haven't gotten into footwear, they could make $40 sneakers in china and slap the logo on and make $250+ a pair, talk about easy money.

My Nokai 3310 was fine, too, until I tossed it away. Does that mean I should have never bought another phone? Regarding retina, can you please name another brand with them on laptops? Can you name another brand with a 326DPI display on their phones? If it's been available before then I'm sure you can!

> Have you actually used a Mac? Yes, you can get the same specs for less, but can you get the same specs with the same kind of build quality, battery life, driver support (on both OS X and Windows), display quality, and overall integration with an entire ecosystem for less on anything else?

Yes. Owned 2. Mananged to sell them, fortunately.

Again, yes. I currently have a dell XPS 15 with an HD display. The display is better than all MBPs short of the 17" 1920x1200 with matte display. It has a better sound system with integrated subwoofer, and I opted for the 9 cell batter which is giving me 6-7 hours of real-world performance despite the XPS having a quad core SB i7. Build quality? Let's qualify that: Build materials of the case of the MBP are better. Quality and fitment is the same: The XPS is well-built, but has some plastic. Considering the XPS is outfitted like a MBP that is twice the price, I don't care at all.

>Oh, and he always claims how he can get x specs for y dollars, yet he never provides concrete, verifiable examples.

I just checked the HP website. I just picked a random 15 inch laptop there (the pavillion dv6tqe), and specced it, as close as I could, to the 15 MBP. I got the price up to $1200 ($1450 less $250), but it had more RAM (8 GB) an HD antiglare display, a kepler 650M with 2 GB of GDDR5 (the MPB's kepler comes with 512 MB). I also threw in a 9 cell battery which is rated at 9 hrs of battery life and a 750 GB HDD at 7200 RPM (the MBP has a 500 GB 5200 RPM HDD). The 15" MBP is still $1799 without options. If I had just upgraded the pavillion's graphics and display and nothing else, it would cost about $1100, but would still have double the RAM and HDD space and a higher resolution display. A $700 price difference is big when you consider that the cheaper system is specced higher. The retina MBP is more interesting, but when I was mucking about with it I had a hard time finding a way to actually use the high pixel density. I like pixel density, and I like that apple is pushing it, but 15" laptops don't need resolutions that high - it's just not usable.

Not entirely true. Ask anybody who used a computer in the late 80s, early 90s, and Apple was way ahead. SCSI on the desktop? Check. A completely USB connected home computer? Check. In fact, it was likely that Apple's early insistence on cutting edge tech is at least part of the reason nobody bought them until Steve Jobs came back. SCSI on the desktop? Who the fuck can afford SCSI on the desktop, and why the hell would I need it?
I agree however that with core components (processor, graphics card, etc.) Apple's computers are consistently behind PCs. BUT...Apple isn't really interested in selling computers that run Crysis at 2560x5760 in full 3D, because they learned the hard way that such things only serve a niche market. They build PCs like Black & Decker builds coffee makers. You turn it on, it works.
Which is exactly why I'll never own an Apple computer. I don't give a shit about user-friendly or stability. I want to play with the naughty bits.
I do think in certain areas they are ahead. I hate Apple to the core, but I can't even argue with the quality of the Apple displays. The original iPod scroll wheel was way ahead of its competition, and maybe touchscreen smartphones were inevitable, but the iPhone made it work before anyone else did.

Frankly Apple has NEVER been ahead of the curve, they are a brand, like Prada and Nike. You look at even the machines Apple releases on their refresh and you can get machines that very same day that have MOAR power, MOAR memory, MOAR speed, and cost less. the ONLY thing that sells Apple is the brand, because it'll never be hip to carry a Dell or an HP, that's all.

I dont have other examples, but the REALLY high res displays ("Retina") on their phones and laptops do kind of put them ahead of the curveWhile all the other manufacturers refused to listen to consumers asking for something better than 1366*768 or 1080p, Apple did go ahead and make a laptop and tablet with a higher res diaplay(and ofc the Macbook Air form factor)

You do realize that most of these manufacturers (especially Lenovo and Sony) have had laptops for sale with screen resolutions in excess of Apple's for years? It's just that most customers don't want to buy them because they're expensive. So they become little-reviewed niche products for industry professionals or rich people that don't want to buy Macs. Apple's innovation has been to make the whole customer base subsidize the costs through economies of scale, making them look both cooler and more technicall

On the contrary, would you like to be known as Tiffany Store Genius or Apple Store Genius?

Well, having just watched "Breakfast at Tiffany's" last night...

The store employee agreed to engrave a plastic ring for under ten bucks, and it wasn't even a Tiffany's ring. While it's true he did solve George Peppard's problem, Tiffany's probably wouldn't consider him a Genius since the net benefit to them was likely negative.

Sheeeit, 50% of our sales comes from rentals because they don't wan't something trackable on computer. A few buy our no-trace drives loaded with porn, and also on occasion there's the buyer of DVDs/Blu-Ray because they want to display it on a big screen.

And no, sexual harassment is not so expected in this field. We're all freaks and flirt with each other all the time. Whether it gets serious or not is a different story (and one I have many of.)

Contemplate the meaning of that for a moment. It's not just that we have high unemployment, it's that those WITH employment aren't getting anything close to a living wage. And you know what happens when you don't get a living wage? You have to go on welfare programs.

Where I live, the cheapest living accommodations are $300 / month, and you don't go outside after dark. That gets you a bed in a room with a roommate, and you're sharing a four bedroom apt with 6 other people in the other three rooms. Your portion of the utilities is $100 / month in the winter and $50 in the summer. Food for one person will run you $450 / month, and public transport is $75 / month (lousy subsidies).

Now, $1100 every two weeks is not $11/hr, its $14 / hr. $11/ hr is $900. Take out 17% taxes + soc sec + every other thing, and you get $1500 / month total.

So yes, if you're willing to live in the worst slum, never own a car, never have any privacy or a family, never spend money on a social life, and commute 2 hours a day for an 8 hour shift (if you're lucky enough to get 8 hours, most service jobs are "part time" only to ensure employers don't have to provide full benefits.), you can put away about $500 / month. At that rate, when you are ready to retire, you will have about 250k in savings and no pension, very little if any social security income, and you'll have to hoard that $250k to pay for living in that same slum you have been in for the last 40 years.

Yay American dream.

Minimum wage in this country needs to go up a lot, and millionaires need to return to the days when they were expected to pay 75%+ of their income in taxes to support the society that has made them rich in the first place.

Where did the idea EVER come from that you were supposed to get a job/situation like the one you describe and stay that way your entire life?

The plan should be, get a job. Keep that job until you can get a better one. When you can, get a better job and move up. Repeat as needed. It won't take most people more than a few years, a decade tops, to climb the job ladder into something that pays well and provides the base needed to raise a family and eventually retire. They can climb the ladder as high as ambition will take them.

Nobody is supposed to try to have a family and kids, and/or work their entire lives and try to retire off a job paying $11 an hour. THAT idea is repulsive. This country rewards people who get off their tails and think outside their self-imposed boxes (mental prison cells) and try to achieve something better. You have got to try.

Easy? No. Nobody promised easy. Just that it can be done if someone is willing to try.

Settling for less than that is the problem. Too many people peak at those low plateau jobs and never reach higher.

Where did the idea EVER come from that you were supposed to get a job/situation like the one you describe and stay that way your entire life?

That's the definition of a "living wage".

We in the US have taken up this "up or out" mentality where it's no longer possible to spend your life doing a simple task; you have to somehow "better yourself" in order to actually make a living wage.

So we start off at starvation wages, and if we can't make the cut we starve. Just listen to some of the rhetoric.

There's a lot of value in having an experienced person doing basic tasks, but we've forgotten that. Go to Europe, or Japan, and see what level of service you get there.

Where do I start with this one? "Working hard?", "talent?". So folks working in fast food restaurants, cleaning businesses, pumping gas (I live in Oregon) don't work hard and don't deserve a living wage? Not everyone is lucky to have the chance, and talent, to be a surgeon, a software developer, an investment banker, etc.
People shouldn't be consigned to a live of just scraping by just because you feel they're not worthy. Having access to decent housing, funds for your retirement, reasonable healthcare and

"If you (1) work hard and (2) have the talent, you can achieve greatness."

This sounds pretty much like the ideal statement of how to get on in a capitalistic society. You need to put the effort in, and you need to have intrinsic value. If you don't have *both* of those, you're screwed. That's how capitalism works - it's a re-definition of "selfishness" as applied to the working environment because the crux of the system is that the workforce is working for private owners, not the government. Those private owners do their best to exploit their employees to maximize their profit, because, well, they think the money ought to be in *their* hands rather than their employees.

Your plea is that not everyone has intrinsic value, and so they are screwed; that's not fair to them and ought not be tolerated (which I agree with, for what it's worth). Unfortunately, what you're suggesting is that the US adopt a more-socialist outlook, and the raving loonies on the right, as well as a lingering distrust of communism (unfortunately conflated with socialism) from the US-vs-Russia days make that... unlikely.

Socialism isn't the worst thing in the world. Example: in the UK, when a car hit me on my motorbike, the police, fire brigade (the bike was in flames) and ambulance were there in minutes (these are all socialised services), I was taken to hospital, operated on, cared for and released a week or so later. Cost to me at the time: $0 - healthcare is socialised as well - everyone pays a little (much less than I pay for health insurance in the US now, for example) and no-one ever goes bankrupt because of medical fees... In addition, I obtained grants (from the government) to go to college, and the govt. paid me to do a PhD, not the other way around. This is more socialism.

The UK is still a capitalistic society because capitalism is a fine way to harness the innate desire to better oneself. I'm happy about this - I was free to create a startup company, go bust, create another and sell it for a handsome profit - in a non-capitalistic society that would have been far harder to do. I do like the socialist safety nets that underpin UK society though, my theory goes like this: capitalism is like a fine blade - it's a lot better when it's tempered. The problem for a lot of Americans seems to be that one uses Socialism to temper Capitalism, then you get the best of both worlds by treading the middle-path rather than veering too far to the right or to the left. As it stands, the US is in danger of veering so far to the right that I'm not even sure it could come back without some major upheaval in US society. This is the major reason I haven't switched citizenship - I used to joke that retaining my UK citizenship (even though I'm married with a kid) was the fallback plan. It's not a joke any more, I doubt my long-term future is in the US - once I've made enough cash, we'll probably be off.

Here is a man that raises his family of four on 27K/year: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2012/06/01/raising-a-family-on-under-2000-per-year/.

I live on 28K/year (making 90K/year, mind you!).

My two roommates live on the 12K/year stipend for their research.

My girlfriend lives on 15K/year.

None of us are on welfare. All of us have savings cushions. All of use drive our own (paid for) cars (between 15 and 4 years old, mine is the oldest). All of us can afford to do reasonable things: going to swim with dolphins this weekend, all of us have spent at least 1 week in a foreign country this past year, several of us have had theme-park weekends, and we each eat out of the house about once per week. We are not about to claim welfare.

Budgets please. Unless you live in some total backwater, you can't live on $12K/yr, or $15K/yr without some form of assistance. Where I live a cheap apartment can cost $6K/yr. Groceries are easily $400/mo, so that doesn't leave enough to buy gas for one of your paid-for cars.

Don't eat out much. Buy and cook in bulk. Save leftovers. Buy generic over brand name, etc. You can get that number down. I'd say $200 a month per person (and I bet there are slashdotters who could get that down to $100 a month per person!) is a good target for most of the developed world, unless you're in an unusually expensive location.

Such attempts at cost savings don't make much sense, if you earn a lot of income since they often take time to do and your time is more valuable doing other things.

That and actually spending 28k a year is a lot. That's equivalent to about 40k/year in before tax income (which is 20 bucks an hour).

The two on research grants only get 12k but they don't and aren't expected to be building a pension or unemployment for example. Nor would they be able to build equity in a property at that rate. On and if they're on research grants they probably have health care through their institutions, and they're living that badly (with no meaningfu

Sure, you can live on $15K/year as a kid, supporting just yourself, if you're lucky enough to be in good health. But for a family of 4, health care premiums alone average over $15K / year [cnn.com]. $15k minus $15k doesn't leave a lot for other essentials. ("Family of 4" is the most reasonable unit of sustainability, since two people with two kids on average equals a steady population.)

Like many people, I have "employer-provided" health care that pays a good chunk of the $15k, but that no longer means as much as

I second this. I work as a corrections officer in Kansas, working with >800 inmates Minimum to Maximum security inmates five days a week, and I only make $12.98/hour, with very bleak outlook in the way of raises.

You don't work at the Apple Store to make any sort of serious cash. There are many better conduits for people to travel down in both IT and sales if money is a concern. People work there for the *coolness* factor. It's about as hot as working for Google or Facebook, and employee discounts are never a bad thing. Its also an easy experience builder for people, especially given the floor traffic.

And not to nitpick, but $10/hr ain't bad. Especially if you're earning tips.

Funny how the summary didn't note why the article was just published, Apple just gave everyone raises. Reports are that geniuses are being paid in the ballpark of $30 an hour now, which is reasonable for an IT focused job.

From TFA:

"Even Apple, it seems, has recently decided it needs to pay its workers more. Last week, four months after The New York Times first began inquiring about the wages of its store employees, the company started to inform some staff members that they would receive substantial raises. An Apple spokesman confirmed the raises but would not discuss their size, timing or impetus, nor who would earn them.

But Cory Moll, a salesman in the San Francisco flagship store and a vocal labor activist, said that on Tuesday he was given a raise of $2.82 an hour, to $17.31, an increase of 19.5 percent and a big jump compared with the 49-cent raise he was given last year."

Every one of the numbers tossed around in this article make me gag. Those wages, even pre-raise, are ridiculously high for an entry level retail job. And as for your $30 and hour for the "genius" bar?? Please. My sister is an RN - you know - the people in the hospital that save your life? - and she gets about $25 an hour. I've NEVER heard of an IT position, especially one attached to a retail operation, making that.

Would you rather start at an Apple store for $11.91 an hour (average starting base pay, according to the linked article) and an employee discount, or at Tiffany for $15.60?

Hard to say. I'd have to run the math, factoring in such variables as value of store stock, ease of concealment, average return for Apple/Tiffany product on the black market, sophistication of store security and employee monitoring, etc.

In many cases, Tiffany wouldn't hire them. I've never seen anyone with two-inch gauges and tattoos from wrist to shoulder working at Tiffany.

I'm somewhat surprised that Apple hires them -- not that they don't do a good job, but few companies would hire such for public-facing positions. I think Apple has tapped a good employee resource there; bright, competent young people who've made personal appearance choices that generally disqualify them for customer-facing jobs better-paid than 7-11. And it probably does allow them to pay a little less.

How true. When I was hired at McDonald's 20 years ago, you could not have visible tattoos on anybody, any jewelry for men, and women could only have stud earrings (one per ear, no necklaces, etc). The majority of the time hey wouldnt bother to HIRE people that interviewed outside that norm. That was BRAND policy.

Any office job was the same thing. If you got tattoos, they had to cover under tees or you would be wearing long sleeves forever.

You can be forward-thinking and still be realistic about how companies typically select employees for public-facing positions.

In addition, swillden's description was probably the most non-judgmental analysis of that particular employee issue I've read to date. The only real implicit judgment in the statement was actually in regard to his assumptions about Apple, not the people they hire for front-line retail positions.

Minimum wage is the norm. I work for a pretty good employer (Home Depot), and I get a raise whenever minimum wage goes up. I do not get the opportunity to work inside in air conditioning. I am expected to help people load their cars with their purchases, which more then once have literally weighed a ton (50 40 lb bags). My option for advancement exist, but none would get me to $11.91/hr. I do not get an employee discount of any kind, on anything. I could have benefits, but they require premiums and on $8/hr premiums are impossible.

I posted this above, also, but I worked for Lowe's about five years ago, and at that time, Depot paid more than Lowe's did. I know both have been hurting lately, but I was making $11.55 [akamaihd.net] as a CSR in Flooring ($12.05 when I left at the end of 2007) in 2005. At the time, they gave a 10% raise if you moved up to Team Leader, and again to Sales Specialist or Department Manager (I started in 2003 at $9.50). Start looking for opportunities for advancement, work hard, and kiss ass, the lack of the last being the

In retail $11.91 an hour starting wage is great. Even for skilled employees. H and R Block Tax preparers, for example, are only paid $8.50.

I have had jobs in retail since 1999, and I have never heard of a non-supervisor pulling in $11.91 an hour in base salary before. Yeah with commission the 20-hour a week entry-level dude can sometimes pull in $15/$20, but base salary of almost $12? It just doesn't happen outside of New York City.